


heart dancing precariously on the edge of my fingertips

by sugarybowl



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - His Dark Materials Fusion, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-06-16 10:58:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15435606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarybowl/pseuds/sugarybowl
Summary: For my Inception Bingo square "Daemons/His Dark Materials AU".





	heart dancing precariously on the edge of my fingertips

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't watched this movie much less read these books, please forgive rampant mistakes!

“You know you have a terrible habit of critiquing things that catch your eye before you even stop to consider why they caught your eye?”

Arthur doesn’t look up from his notes to dignify such a ridiculous statement, “They catch my eye because they’re hideous.”

Above him, there’s an aborted chuckle, “Hideous, he says.”

“The shirt,” Arthur mumbles under his breath, “and the suit and the shoes."

“Arthur.”

“Juniper.”

There’s a tsk from above him, “Well enough. He’s a curious thing isn’t he. She’s even more interesting.”

Arthur only hums.

“Do you recognize that species?”

Arthur glances over and then back down at his notebook, as if he hadn’t already committed the animal to memory, “She’s a numbat.”

“I’m going to go introduce myself,” she says, not waiting another moment before swooping down from her perch at the top of the bookcase.

He watches the two, Juniper showing off the spread of her wings as if there could be any creature who had never seen a hawk before. The man in the gaudy outfit has not introduced himself nor his daemon, but Juniper never lets things like bad taste or outright rudeness stop her from being a gossip.

Dom struts into the room wringing his hands, Kitty the ironically named German Shepard trailing behind him. He’s always nervous when neither Miles or Mal are in the room, he needs to stop that if they’re really going to pull anything illegal off without getting caught.

“Arthur,” he says frowning slightly until he spots Juniper across the room, “ah – Eames you’re here.”

“Dominick,” the man says with a needlessly smug looking smile.

“Eames, Arthur,” Dom says, with some significance. Arthur finds self-control from reserves he didn’t know he had and doesn’t roll his eyes as he stands and walks over to the other man to shake his hand.

“Arthur,” he repeats, “and that’s Juniper.”

“Pleasure darling, I’m Eames,” the man confirms, letting go of his handshake and kneeling to swoop up the small creature posed on its hindlegs beside Juniper, “this is Constance.”

-

The first time he sees them forge, when he finally understands why Dom was so nervous that first day and why Eames and Constance were The Best and by some plainly declared The Only to truly forge in this business, that first time he almost loses an ear to Juniper.

Arthur had seen other forgers before, of course, they studied their templates carefully as any actor and took those details, visual and behavioral, into the dream with them. Their daemons followed suit, observing and copying in much the same way. Eames and Constance didn’t work that way. It was perhaps the best and most dangerously kept secret in the business how in the hell they did _that_.

Certainly, they went off and infiltrated, observed and noted just as all other forgers did – but then. And then.

Arthur didn’t have the words for it the first time he saw Eames in all of his 29 years walk into their office with an incongruous ocelot at his heels.

Juniper swoops onto his shoulder from her perch above his desk and stands tall and vigilant, all of her easy familiarity with Constance vanishing as quickly as the oxygen from Arthur’s lungs.

Eames smiled and waved around the room with all the casual ease of someone who hadn’t had his daemon change on him well into adulthood. It takes him quite a bit longer than it should to read the room.

“Oh,” he says as he glances down at the creature beside him, “I guess Cobb wasn’t all that thorough in his debrief now was he.”

Juniper is pecking at the top of his ear, softly yet anxious, “Is she…”

“Eames,” Dom interrupts as he walks into the office looking harried.

He catches sight of them both and smiles like a maniac, “She truly is magnificent.”

Eames inclines his head with what seems to be honest modesty.

“I need an explanation and I need it yesterday,” Arthur manages to grit through his teeth.

Eames takes a deep breath and a seat across from Arthur.

“Constance leads my forges, dear Arthur. We take stock of our mark, I study like a good boy and she…does her thing.”

Arthur opens and closes his mouth several times before he reaches up to swipe his hand over Juniper’s feathers. She has been worryingly silent, but she takes his cue expertly and takes flight, returning in seconds and dropping the red die into his open palm.

“Excuse me,” he says, rushing if not running into the tiny office bathroom.

“How is it possible,” Juniper says, as soon as the door shuts behind them and she takes a perch on the sink.

Arthur is too busy rolling his die, once, twice, as many times as it takes to ascertain that he isn’t losing his mind in a dream.

“Incurable immaturity? A hormonal disorder? I don’t – I’ve never…” so much like Juniper, the idea that he is ignorant of something to which there is an answer is absolutely intolerable.

“At will, Arthur. At will! You heard them, she didn’t just wake up that way – she’s forging. Up here.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” he says, most certainly pained.

There is a look of deadly determination in her eyes that makes him unspeakably proud. It reminds him of the day that he had gone into school with his shoulders hunched and a dormouse in his pocket and come home with blood in his mouth and a hawk on his shoulder.

“I will find out,” she declares, “this is critical information.”

“For the job,” Arthur clarifies.

“Of course,” she says with a tilt of her head, “the job.”

-

Arthur keeps his distance from Eames for the rest of the day, only staying close enough for Juniper to hold her interrogation of the other daemon comfortably. It was difficult for Arthur to think of her as Constance even though he had only met her a handful of days ago.

 Eames throws him one or two glances during the rest of the day but he must understand, surely, he must understand how disconcerting a wild card like this is for him. Still, he is this team’s point man. He can’t lose his composure this way even if he doesn’t trust Eames as far as he can throw him.

It isn’t subtle, the way Juniper is clearly gathering information for Arthur, but he isn’t ashamed. It’s well understood that daemons have a much more difficult time lying to one another, which is perhaps a point in Eames’ favor, how calm he seems to be in the face of Juniper’s insistence.

“They don’t know the reason,” she says softly once she returns to him, “and it isn’t easy for either of them. She would not say much more than that.”

“But it is at will,” Arthur confirms just as softly, “she can control the change of her shape.”

“Yes,” Juniper says, worrying his ear gently once again, “it started around the time she should have settled. They are… making the best of it. I can't imagine it, being so untethered so uncertain.”

He makes a noise half agreement half wonder and all judgement. 

“Hey,” she says putting measured pressure from her talons on his shoulder, “remember dormouse started the fight, Arthur. She is as she is because she must be for him.”

Arthur glances up from beneath his eyelashes, watches the comforting way in which Eames run’s his hand over Constance’s back.

Constance. He can’t help but smile as he wonders if despite the shape of her she is precisely that for him. 


End file.
